Location:
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Located in south-western Kenya,
bordering Serengeti National Park, on the Tanzania border. Altitude: 1,500 - 2,100 meters.
The
Masai Mara is Kenya's finest wildlife sanctuary. Everything about this
reserve is outstanding. The wildlife is abundant and the gentle
rolling grassland ensures that animals are never out of sight. Birds
too are prolific, including migrant birds and 57 species of birds of
prey. |
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Accommodation:
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Fauna & Flora:
| Open grasslands with patches of acacia
woodland, thickets, and riverine forests. In the dry season July-October) the reserve is a
major concentration area of migratory herbivores including approximately 250,000 zebra and
1.3 million wildebeest. There are also gazelle, elephant, topi, buffalo, lion (Kenya's
largest population), black rhino, hippo, hyena, giraffe, leopard, and mongoose. The bird
life is prolific, including 53 species of birds of prey. |
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General:
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The climate is gentle, rarely too hot and well spread
rainfall year round. When it rains, its is almost always in the late afternoon or night.
Between July and October, when the great wildebeest migration is in the Mara the sensation
is unparalleled. The wildlife is far from being confined within the
Reserve boundaries and an even larger area, generally referred to as the 'dispersal area'
extends north and east of the game Reserve. |
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Maasai live within the dispersal area with their stock but centuries
of close association with the wildlife has resulted in an almost
symbiotic relationship where wildlife and people live in peace with
one another. |
| The first sight of this park is breathtaking. Here
the great herds of shuffling elephants browse among the rich tree-studded grasslands with
an occasional sighting of a solitary and ill-tempered rhino, Thompson's and Grant's
gazelle, topi and eland and many more species of plains' game offer a rich choice of food
for the dominant predators; lion, leopard and cheetah which hunt in this pristine
wilderness. |
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In the Mara River, hippo submerge at the approach of
a vehicle only to surface seconds later to snort and grumble their displeasure. But this
richness of fauna, this profusion of winged beauty and the untouched fragility of the
landscape, are all subordinate to the Mara's foremost attraction, the march of the
wildebeest. |
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| After exhausting the grazing in Tanzania's
northern Serengeti National Park, a large number of wildebeest and zebra enter Masai Mara
around the end of June drawn by the sweet grass raised by the long rains of April and May.
It is estimated that more than half a million wildebeest enter the Mara and are joined by
another 100,000 from the Loita hills east of the Mara. Driving in the midst of these great
herds is an unimaginable experience. |
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Whilst the eyes feast on the spectacle, the air
carries the smells, the dust and the sounds of hundreds of thousands of animals. There is
nowhere else on earth to compare with this wildlife marvel. Once the Mara grass has been
devoured and when fresh rain in Tanzania has brought forth a new flush there, the herds
turn south, heading hundreds of kilometers back to Serengeti and the Ngorongoro plains.
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There the young are dropped in time to grow sufficiently strong to undertake the long
march north six months later.
Apart from the better known species, there are also
other rare ones that can be added to the visitor's checklist. These include the roan
antelope, the Bat-eared foxes and thousands of topi. The combination of a gentle climate, scenic splendor
and untold numbers of wildlife makes the Masai Mara National Reserve Kenya's most popular
inland destination.
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